It's almost impossible in non North American sports. There's no relegation in North American sports. It's a completely different landscape on how you build your teams. There's also salary caps over here.

And by the way. The Oakland A's haven't won anything of significance in over 20 years.

The gains in football from what I can see are in set pieces and recruitment.

I’d actually be fairly confident with sam hat if you got the guy in who worked with midjlland and said - he reckons he can get you 5 more Goals a year from set pieces, sam would be receptive.

It’s the recruitment bit that worries me because we have a set up that we’d have to tear down and start again, and I think we’re still held back by the scouts and agents and managers and directors who alll want to put their oar in, rather than a clear directive and data driven identification of talents.

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I knew that someday I was going to die, and I knew that before I died, two things would happen to me. That number one; I would regret my entire life, and number two; that I would want to live my life over again.

It's almost impossible in non North American sports. There's no relegation in North American sports. It's a completely different landscape on how you build your teams. There's also salary caps over here.

And by the way. The Oakland A's haven't won anything of significance in over 20 years.

I disagree completely.

There are plenty of market inefficiencies to be exploited in football, given the sheer number of players and leagues worldwide. The problem is that clubs are married to getting player recommendations from agents and "proper football men" and don't want to do the relatively easy work of hiring a bunch of football nerds to mine the data (or do video scouting for leagues that don't have reliable data) to find better transfer targets. There's a good reason why a club like Brentford, with a relegation budget by Championship standards, finishes comfortably mid-table every year while clubs with much greater resources finish below them. Edges are there for clubs who care to look.

In the major North American sports, especially baseball, teams control all of the major talent from the moment they become professionals. Analytics have taken off in these sports out of necessity. Talent acquisition is much more restricted (you can't just go out and buy whoever you want, whenever you want) and mistakes hurt a lot more, so teams need better methods for determining who's actually good. I think one of the reasons football has been so slow in adopting analytics is because clubs can always fix their mistakes with a sale (goodbye, bad contract) and another transfer (hello, fresh face), however wasteful that is. If an NBA team signs a bad player for a lot of money, they're usually stuck with his contract until it expires. So most (all?) NBA teams now have a dedicated analytics department to minimize these sorts of mistakes. Given the crazy wages being paid in the PL and the fact that it's getting harder and harder to shift players out, we would be wise to heed their example.

As for the A's... the core principles of their approach have been appropriated by every other team in baseball, including teams with a lot more money, so no surprise that they haven't been winning. Edges only exist for as long as you're one of a few (or better yet, the only one) exploiting them. Which is one of the many reasons why I'm keen to see Everton ditch the reliance on "proper football men" and move on to a more efficient mix of analytics and traditional/video scouting.

As for the A's... the core principles of their approach have been appropriated by every other team in baseball, including teams with a lot more money, so no surprise that they haven't been winning. Edges only exist for as long as you're one of a few (or better yet, the only one) exploiting them. Which is one of the many reasons why I'm keen to see Everton ditch the reliance on "proper football men" and move on to a more efficient mix of analytics and traditional/video scouting.

Even when they were the only ones exploiting them they weren't really winning anything though. Because other teams could spend. Look, Money Balls a great movie and all, and Bill James' work works wonders in the game of Baseball. I'm a huge fan of it. But I think analytical stats are really overrated in other team sports. It matters who plays with who, and where players play, and what systems players play in in other team sports(Take Keane for example). Baseball is an individualist team sport. To an extent The numbers are the numbers no matter where the player plays.

IMO If you want to build a whole team around analytics over in Europe(especially the PL) you run the risk of being relegated to lower divisions. Especially when you're in the top flight of the country where teams spend big.

As I said before, it's possible to do so in NA sports as there's no risk to relegation. There's actually rewards to coming last.

It's also possible to do it in the Championship and finish mid table... I get what you're saying with the limited budget and all, but not really a ringing endorsement.

Saying all that, I definitely agree we need to start getting more bang for our buck when we buy, and we need to find some unknowns on the cheap. If that means bringing in some nerdy analytics kids then I'm fine with that. The more people helping the better. I also believe, even more, we need to start building a team through the transfer market and not just arbitrarily buying players that we think are good.

Honestly, i think we should be looking to the bundesliga for our talent.

Even when they were the only ones exploiting them they weren't really winning anything though.

Okay, but they were consistently one of the eight best teams in a league of 30. In 2002, they finished with the second best record (possibly tied for first, depending on the outcome of a game the Yankees never had to play) with a bottom three salary. Not bad.

And what happens when you pair analytics with genuine resources (which Everton have, by the way)? The Red Sox and Cubs each won their first championships in over 100 years with that approach.

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But I think analytical stats are really overrated in other team sports.

Proven effective in the NBA as well. Teams like the Rockets and Warriors have changed the way basketball is played by focusing on the most valuable shots in the game (at the rim, free throws, three pointers). It took an analytic argument/approach to get there but now almost everybody is doing it (or trying). And the triers will probably fail because they're behind the curve.

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It matters who plays with who, and where players play, and what systems players play in in other team sports(Take Keane for example).

I agree 100%. And profiling players/teams through data analysis is a much more efficient way to create this context. The eye test matters but numbers can watch a lot more games than scouts.

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IMO If you want to build a whole team around analytics over in Europe(especially the PL) you run the risk of being relegated to lower divisions. Especially when you're in the top flight of the country where teams spend big.

As I said before, it's possible to do so in NA sports as there's no risk to relegation. There's actually rewards to coming last.

I don't see this as an argument against my point. I'm arguing that we should be using analytics to produce better targets and/or verify that players we like are actually worth the money we spend on them. Not that we should adapt our strategy to only taking ultra-cheap punts on players with interesting numbers.

Example. Someone who produces football analytics content for free wrote these this summer:

We pay our director of football and (probably) scouts good money to evaluate players and decide who's worth signing. It's not great when someone on the internet picks out the issues with said signings so easily. We could have used that £50m in fees and over £200k a week in wages on a better class of player, or even just players who were a better fit, if the club really cared about the analytics POV.

We lack the knowledge, not the money to back it. Relegation is more likely if we keep spending our money like we have than if we get smarter about how we use it.

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It's also possible to do it in the Championship and finish mid table... I get what you're saying with the limited budget and all, but not really a ringing endorsement.

I see the sly wink so I know you understand my original point but it really is an endorsement. They have League One resources but are consistently closer to the playoff places than relegation. Clubs of a similar stature come up to the Championship every season and get slapped straight back down.

It's not as well documented but Brighton care about analytics as well and they have a real chance of staying up this season with relatively little in the way of resources. They also nabbed Pascal Groß for a small fraction of what we paid for Sigurdsson and are getting more or less the same production.

And I think it's complete nonsense to expect analytically-minded teams to conquer every competition they're in because they're smarter. It's not about that. It's about being better than your resources. We have the 6th or 7th highest wage bill in the league and top 20 wage bill in European football. Imagine getting something extra out of that. Now we're a consistent contender for the domestic cups and Europa League, with a chance to crack the CL if one of the bigger clubs falters. Sounds great to me.

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Saying all that, I definitely agree we need to start getting more bang for our buck when we buy, and we need to find some unknowns on the cheap. If that means bringing in some nerdy analytics kids then I'm fine with that.

I also believe, even more, we need to start building a team through the transfer market and not just arbitrarily buying players that we think are good.

Likes...

Would be over the moon with him but surely he's just after a new deal at Seville. We would definitely have to let someone go. I'd love Arda Turan as well. Getting on but Sam could definitely get a tune out of him I reckon. Just have to check his attitude. He was at the heart of things when the Turkish national team imploded a few years back.